


One Moment

by singing_to_empty_caves



Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask
Genre: Breaking the Universe, Or not, Time Travel, You Decide, contemplating existence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-06
Updated: 2018-09-06
Packaged: 2019-07-07 21:10:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15916323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/singing_to_empty_caves/pseuds/singing_to_empty_caves
Summary: Perhaps the decision you make in one moment could determine the fate of... possibly everything.--(Link overthinks opening a door because he doesn't want to destroy the universe.)





	One Moment

My memory is in pieces.

I didn’t expect it to survive all that long, considering that everything around me was a circle and one I couldn’t escape at that, but I didn’t expect delusions. After all, if I am apt enough to make sense of the various puzzle pieces that comprise the story I am telling with my every footfall, then should I not also understand the things that have led up to the moment I live in?

It’s only a door. It’s only a simple door, and I can’t fathom why I would feel this way about a door inside of a tower-like domain of forced brain-teasers that sits atop a mountain.

I should feel cold, alone, and scared. I do. All of those things sit at the forefront of my mind, and I can’t shake them.

There’s also something… deeper. I don’t only fear for my life. I think I may almost fear for my existence in the universe.

What if something happened, and the universe just… snapped? What if, one moment, something didn’t align, and the mechanisms of reality ceased to function, and the system of every second that passed simply fell apart? What would happen?

I realize with a shudder that this is the possibility which haunts me from the other side of this door. Should I walk into the blackness and nothing ever see light again, would any of us know? Would any of us even remain on any sort of plane to have the ability to know in the first place?

I don’t know if I’ve done enough damage to the circle to cause the malfunction of the existential machine. There’s no way for me to tell what consequences my actions have, or whether this theoretical universal disbandment would even nod to my footprints left walking the world over and over.

“Just get it over with already!”

Though I don’t often speak to her, I lift my head and stare into the glow of my truce-induced partner.

“Do you think that, if opening this door ended the universe, I should still do it?”

“Quit stalling!”

“No, really. What if I touched this door, and everything ended… or worse, never began?” I let out a faint chuckle. “It’d be an interesting way to break the cycle, I suppose. You know, the world can’t be destroyed if there’s no world.”

“I have no idea what you’re on about, but we need to get going! We’re running out of time!”

I sit on the ground, not out of defiance to her orders, but because I am adrift in these thoughts.

“Time is a construct. At most, the beginning held only the sun and the moon. Who started measuring days? Hours? Minutes? Why exactly 72? Why not the third dawn? Seems more accurate to me, if the universe is to blame for our predicament. I don’t think it is, though. I think it’s probably that the universe is suffering because of these 72 hours. We’re walking a path that’s become beaten by our own steps--well, mine, and sprinkled with the traces of your flight, as well. What if the ground is weakened by the deepening rut we’ve made? What if, when I open this door, it’s the last thing I ever do, and all of the other things I’ve done in that moment in all of the other cycles we’ve passed through break through existence like it was paper?”

She waits a moment in silence, presumably to be sure that my rambling is over with.

“I honestly don’t know what to say. I think I liked all of this more when you were just an irritated kid looking for his horse and a little creeped out by Termina in general. Not… questioning reality.”

I shrug. “These past couple of years have been the strangest in my life. I’ve had a lot to think about.”

There is a beat of quiet which allows us both to gather our thoughts.

“I think you should open the door anyways. You can’t regret something if you don’t exist to regret it… or to have done it at all.”

“So you did understand my little speech,” I tease, though I do not smile as I rise to my feet. “I’ll open it, then.”

My hand reaches out to touch the door. As with all in the domains of the disgraced deities, it rises at my command. I step into blackness.

 

Who’s to say that existence continued? After all, the rest of my story might have only been the dream of some otherworldly being. Perhaps the scattered pieces of my universe fell into a world which took what was and what might have been, and put them back together.

Then again… who’s to say that existence ended?

Was there even existence at all?

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for reading!
> 
> Believe it or not, this entire thing resulted from me remembering when I went through the boss door at Snowhead and my game froze, and THAT memory was triggered by Wind Waker freezing up. I just started typing, and this is what my brain wanted to come out.
> 
> Sorry if I hurt your head!


End file.
